


Who I Want to Be

by KissTheBoy7



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Menstruation, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissTheBoy7/pseuds/KissTheBoy7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trans!Freddie. All his life, the power of denial has kept Freddie going. Now, a teenaged Freddie Trumper is finally forced to confront the reality of his situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who I Want to Be

"Are you okay?" A girl, probably about his age, stops and rests a hand on Freddie's shoulder looking concerned. Her eyebrows are pulled together and everything. He just narrows his eyes at her, holding his stomach, expression twisting. "You look like you could use a Midol-"

"Scram," he growls, and she huffs and goes prancing off, obviously regretting talking to him in the first place. Once he's alone again, he doesn't feel self-conscious about curling in on himself with a whimper, fighting the nauseating pain that seems to be radiating from his lower back.

It's the mid-sixties and Freddie Trumper is no ordinary teenaged boy. Probably because he's not one. Probably because his "real" name is Felicia and the other kids in his class don't even know it.

There's no real way to pinpoint exactly when it happened. He remembers being introduced in kindergarten, tugging at his own long hair distastefully, as Felicia and then threatening to rip any kid's head off if they called him by it. He remembers graduating elementary school and then middle school under his birth name and receiving confused looks from most of his peers, even some of the teachers who had always known him as Freddie and that was it.

He also could tell you that as far back as he can remember he's been calling himself a "him". It wasn't really a conscious decision- it was just true. As far as he was concerned, penis or not he was a boy and no one was going to tell him otherwise.

Gender confusion, the school psychologist had called it when his parents had come in on the third day of kindergarten for a conference with her. "It's only a phase. She'll grow out of it in time." Smiling sweetly, she had ruffled five-year-old Freddie's hair and added, "If anything, puberty is sure to cure her."

The end-of-lunch bell rang, signaling for the hordes of rowdy students to begin tromping through the halls towards their various destinations, and Freddie realized that he would have to suck it up and go back to class. Swallowing down another wave of agony jolting through his nether regions, he stiffly uncurled from the ball that had been tucked into the very corner of the lunchroom and got to his feet, staggering towards the double doors.

Puberty was a word that Freddie had heard for the first time at five and for the second time at ten when the school nurse had gone to each of the fifth-grade classes and explained to the children that their bodies were going to begin changing soon. The boys and girls had been separated then, sent into separate rooms to be given their specific lectures and Freddie had been (with some difficulty) forced to linger with the other biological females, huffing and crossing his arms as he ignored their lesson on the menstrual cycle and how to manage it.

Why should he listen, he had thought to himself, when he wasn't even a girl? Because even at ten years old Freddie was still fairly certain that if he just refused, it wouldn't happen to him. He wouldn't sprout those awful mounds of fat on his chest or start shaving the dark hair that had already begun growing on his legs, and his hair wouldn't grow longer and thicker and his nails would remain unpainted and _no one_ was going to convince him otherwise.

For _Freddie_ , puberty was going to be glorious. It would be his defining moment. In his imagination he could see himself waking up one morning a foot taller, lean and muscular and proud with the proper equipment below the waist and underarm hair that he wasn't expected to shave. _That_ would show them that he'd been right all along.

And that was how he had seen it for four years. When all of the girls in his class began experimenting with makeup, with boys, with push-up bras and nail polish and short skirts, Freddie donned a pair of baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and stared smugly at his still-flat chest. His school pictures each year showed one inch, two, ten of his hair cut off until it barely hung below his ears. It had to be a sign, he told himself as he grew out of his childish innocence into a cynical teenager who no longer hung around the house to listen to his parents fight, that he wasn't getting any more feminine like the other girls.

Maybe he would still be able to show them. Maybe it was true anymore. Desperately, he clung to the wish he'd made when he was five years old with the counselor's hand condescendingly patting his hair down. He _would_ show them- he was Freddie fucking Trumper, and he refused to be told who, _what_ he was.

But now, holding his lower abdomen like he thought he was going to fall apart, fourteen year old Freddie darted into the nearest bathroom with a terrible premonition. _Oh, no…_

There was just no way. Not now. It was too late! He was fourteen, dammit! It was too late for _this._ If it was going to come, then it should have come four years ago like it did for the _actual_ girls. Not waited in the wings, gotten his hopes up.

Ready to cry, he grimaced and fought his way into an empty stall at the end of the row and locked the door shakily behind him, yanking his zipper down so hard that it could easily have come off in his hand. But he wasn't all that concerned about his jeans. He was too busy staring in horror at the red stain seeping into the white cotton of the panties his mother insisted he wear in place of the boxer shorts he actually wanted. A scarlet exclamation point alerting him that he was, in fact, entering womanhood- albeit a little late.

Freddie's heart plummeted into his stomach, a sob hitching in his throat as he stared down uncomprehendingly for a few moments.

No… _No_. No. NO!

"No," he muttered out loud, a heavy feeling in his chest making him physically sick. Forget the cramping in his lower stomach, forget the ache in what he now realized were probably his ovaries. Forget all of it. Forget his _life_. It was over, anyways.

Trembling, he sat gingerly on the toilet seat and huddled his knees up to his chest, blinking back hot tears. _Crying? Really? You're turning into a_ girl, _Trumper,_ his inner self sneered, curling it's lip.

It was right. He was.

The realization was a crushing blow to the chest, a disaster that he couldn't prevent. Despair drew another pathetic sob from somewhere deep in his chest, a sound of pure agony that couldn't even compare to what he actually felt.

His own body had betrayed him. There wasn't a thing to be done about it.

No matter how hard he wished, wanted, pretended, Freddie would always be Felicia.


End file.
